Old 05-02-2006, 07:25 AM
  #4  
ryane946
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Joined APC: Dec 2005
Position: FO, looking left
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I would NOT recommend Delta Connection or RAA.

Flight safety is the best of all the major academies.
Costs are competitive, and in may cases, better than DCA, RAA, and American Flyers.

BIG advantage, you get to do your instrument in a multi. Remember you need 100hrs of multi to get a good airline job offer. If you get your CFI, and sign a contract to instruct for 800hrs (About 1 year), which you will probably need to do anyway, Flight Safety will pay for your CFII and MEI. No cost to you. Another HUGE advantage, since the instrument, commercial, and multi training is ALL done in a multi engine aircraft, most your time instructing will be multi time. It is not uncommon to see F.S. guys with 1000TT and like 500 multi!

No other flight academy even comes close to flight safety.

With that said, I think going to a local FBO is the best option. I would recommend you do your licenses and ratings at an FBO. It will save you at least $20,000 for the same training. At academies, you will pay $55 an hour for instruction. At an FBO you will pay about $35 an hour for instruction. The flip side, when you want to instruct to timebuild, academies will only pay you $14 an hour. The FBO will pay you $25-35 an hour. BIG DIFFERENCE! At academies, you will pay like $105 for an old cessna, while at an FBO you will pay $80-90 for an old cessna. At academies you will pay over $200 an hour for a multi, while those cost about $150 at an FBO. As crazy as these prices are, the place where these academies make their money is ground school. If you take the hours of ground school divided by the total cost, it works out to like $20 an hour for a class of 10-20 people. That's too much! American Flyers charges $80 an hour for classroom instruction, and they are proud of it. That is more than classes cost at Stanford or Yale!!!

That is why I recommend an FBO over an airline academy. It is much cheaper, you will make more money, and the training can be accomplished in the SAME amount of time.
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